Provoking Agents

"A major contribution in women's studies and in other disciplines

        dealing with issues of agency. The authors raise issues that are very

        important . . . and they raise them as they must be raised--by bridging

        theory and action." -- Kathryn Pine Addelson, author of Moral

        Passages: Toward a Collectivist Moral Theory

      Both the women's liberation movement and those who have studied it characterize

        agency as the capacity to make change in individual consciousness, personal

        lives, and society. The seventeen contributors to Provoking Agents

        explore whether--and how--feminist theory, writing, and other social practices

        can help readers move beyond seeing women as a powerless group to effecting

        changes in their own lives and, ultimately, becoming social activists.

        Topics in this multi-disciplinary collection range from maternal surrogacy

        to writing, from consciousness-raising to AIDS activism, from pornography

        to local organizing